The scoreboard says Michigan won. In Kalamazoo, Western Michigan's victory lives on

KALAMAZOO, Michigan -- From the front door of Waldo's Campus Tavern you can see into Western Michigan's football stadium. It isn't technically on campus, despite the name, but it might as well be.

At its backdoor painted on the walls is "No shoes, no shirt, no sense of humor, no service." Inside is the type of crusty wood-paneled dive bar that can only exist in a college town. Great college watering holes serve as anchors for a campus community. It's a common place students take their graduation pictures in full cap and gown. It is thankfully frozen in time and has survived since 1981. 

People in this community have thought a lot about time in the last few weeks. For 15 blissful seconds, Western Michigan had a historic victory over Michigan before the whistles started and head coach Lance Taylor was forced to call his enraptured team off the field. The replay review took about 90 seconds to determine there was still one remaining, that Michigan deserved another chance to win the game – which it then did. Some think it was a phantom second or the byproduct of a hidden clock. The broadcast graphic's clock, supposedly synced with the Big Ten's embedded system, may have only been off by a few tenths of a second, but that was all it took to change history. 

Western Michigan's team, its university and its fans are still dealing with the fallout and processing the disappointment from what is officially another loss to Michigan. A home game Saturday against Boise State is the Broncos' biggest in a decade, and could be the main bullet point for a potential College Football Playoff resume down the line. But the committee, just like those in the community, will have to reckon with what exactly to do about the ending at the Big House. 

12-7

Eric Bowler went to Western and graduated in 2009. He used to work at the school before working at Waldo's. Now he's the bar's general manager. It was here he watched one of the last great Western Michigan football moments, the Cotton Bowl after the undefeated 2016 regular season, with coach P.J. Fleck at the helm, star receiver Corey Davis showing out. Bowler lives close enough that he heard the audio from College GameDay's 2016 visit from his house and walked over not to the set, but to Waldo's to watch it on TV in the bar. 

On Sept. 5, he was here with about 50 others watching his alma mater take on Michigan. It was a relatively slow holiday weekend. As the game went on, and it became apparent Western Michigan had a serious chance to win, he didn't want to jinx it – here he raps his knuckles on the wooden table – but more and more people in the bar started paying attention as the game reached its final minutes. 

There are always signs above the front door of the bar. Maybe they're from a beer distributor, or a wacky slogan. One time Bowler had a giant arrow pointing next door with the words "I'm with stupid" on it. The day after while he was sitting in his disappointment, he had an idea to go to Walgreens and have another sign made up, but this one wasn't advertising Budweiser. 

"I went on the internet and I found a picture that just had the two circles where the ball was, where the clock was and I was like, cool, that'll be on the outside of the banner," Bowler told CBS Sports. "And I was like, what should it say on the inside? It'll just say what the score is: 12-7." 

Fifty-five dollars later, Bowler had his banner. Waldo's is closed on Sundays, and he didn't want to work on Labor Day, so on Tuesday after the game Bowler got a ladder out and strung it up. 

"I was downstairs for a second [after hanging it up]. We weren't open yet, and within 10 minutes, I saw people going by," Bowler said. "One guy took a picture, and then another guy came by and took a picture. Then another guy came by with a camera, and then I was like, 'Oh, okay.' I posted it on social media too. We don't post all the time -- usually once or twice a week -- and then it kind of just took off from there." 

He's had offers from people to borrow or even buy the sign for "a couple hundred bucks." But he says he won't sell it and doesn't have the heart to tell people they could go down the road about five minutes and have their own made. For Bowler it isn't about money. It's about making a statement.

"I just thought it was important to say like, hey, we watched the game, we know what happened. We know what the score is." 

It wasn't just any opponent, this was Michigan. And that matters 

If you follow that "I'm with stupid sign" next door to the University Roadhouse restaurant, you'll happen to see Michigan head coach Kyle Whittingham on a TV next to a wood carving of a bronco head. He's delivering his weekly press conference 100 miles away in Ann Arbor. As Whittingham speaks, Michigan's schedule comes up in a graphic. It says "W, 13-12" next to the Western Michigan line at the top. That is of course the official record, and the way the NCAA will recognize the game's result for all time although the sign next door begs to differ. 

Michigan and Michigan State's spectres loom over the so-called directional schools: Western, Central and Eastern Michigan. Western hasn't officially beaten Michigan ever in nine meetings, and hasn't beaten Michigan State since the early 1900s. Broncos helmets sit next to Wolverine and Spartan lids at Burdick's downtown where Taylor does his weekly radio show. At Waldo's, a WMU flag is flanked by the two bigger state schools. 

The Spartans and the Wolverines both play during the Boise State game, a fact that some on online forums worry will impact attendance.

"This is a unique opportunity. This should be an automatic sellout," a commenter writes. "Same old story. Looking at ticket sales, we are nowhere near a sellout."

A push for the school's second-ever appearance on College GameDay fell short. Western Michigan officials admit that sellouts are rare, but the attendance for the home opener Week 2 against FCS Monmouth was 24,605, the largest for a home opener since 2017 which was the year after the Broncos' run to the Cotton Bowl. One school official says the Wolverines and Spartans drawing attendance away is overstated. 

At Roadhouse, a bartender named Claire says she knows Western won the game. She isn't even really a football fan, but she says she couldn't ignore what she saw. Her colleague Amy admits things are busier when the Broncos are good. She commends how the school handled the fallout and admits to Western's typical place in the food chain.

"You don't want to piss those big schools off, because you have to play them," she says.

Western Michigan vs. Michigan, by the numbers

*Michigan's alumni figure includes its Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Flint campuses. Its enrollment figure is for Ann Arbor. 

Amy's manager, Max Stobart, is a Western grad and was working the night of the Michigan game. Predictably, he also believes Western won. 

"Everybody was super happy because the game was over," Stobart said. "And then the refs come out. We didn't have the sound playing. Everyone was kind of yelling, then quieted down, trying to figure out what was happening. All of a sudden, the team comes back on the field. We see him put one second on the clock. We're still like we're good. It's fine. They complete the Hail Mary. Everyone's in here like hands on their head. Can't even believe it. Started yelling. One of my coworkers was here in a Michigan jersey. Everyone started yelling at him like, 'Hey man, that was not fair. That was unjust.'" 

Price Pullins was at Roadhouse the night of the game too. He's a double Western Michigan graduate and former chief behavioral psychologist for the Michigan department of health and human services. Michigan is the oldest school in the state and predates even the school that eventually became Western Michigan by 86 years. If this same thing would have happened against Ohio State or Georgia or Alabama, it would have stung, sure, but there's a twisting of the knife because it's the maize and blue. 

"Michigan has always been a pretty big power in football, and they are one of the predominant teams in the United States," Pullins said. "To be in a game with Michigan is huge."

After it was over, Lance Taylor needed time to grieve 

Taylor really has only just started talking about the full gamut of emotions he felt. It took him a bit to process all he went through. He initially didn't even open up to those closest to him. 

"Because everyone in the world wanted to talk about it, I didn't really want to talk about it [with my family]," Taylor said. "I have a great relationship with my dad. He played football for coach [Bear] Bryant in the 70s. We talk daily, he's kind of a sounding board. I didn't talk to him really for about 10 days after the Michigan game because I just didn't want to talk about it. I was tired of talking about it." 

Taylor describes it as emotionally draining to the point that he was more exhausted than he'd ever been after a win following the 49-14 victory over Monmouth in Week 2. 

"When I finally opened up to my wife after the Monmouth game, I told her it was probably one of the hardest things that I've gone through," Taylor said. "Because you go through the emotional roller coaster of you win the game -- which is probably the biggest win in my personal career and probably one of the biggest wins in Western Michigan football history -- to you lose the game all in a matter of minutes and you emotionally go through that. We took the field like we won the game. I think that the weight of that was really hard for me. Now, I kind of talk about it just depending on the mood. It depends where I'm at on the roller coaster. I've kind of gone through all phases of trying to deal with it from joy to anguish to anger, and it's kind of become part of you know who we are so you're able to compartmentalize it a little bit."

There were understandably players in tears in the postgame locker room. Some, like cornerback Jarvarius Sims, were caught by TV cameras breaking down in the aftermath. 

"It was an indescribable feeling, man," Sims said. "I'm very passionate. I've been crying ever since I was a kid when I lose a football game, so it's nothing new, just a lot more people can see it this time. It was definitely a feeling that I'll never forget, and it just made me more and more hungrier to keep pushing myself and pushing this thing to achieve what we want to achieve." 

Part of Taylor concealing how he felt had to do with the emotions he knew his players were feeling. If they weren't able to minimize the emotions, could they ever move on? He had a player like Michigan transfer Micah Davis, who touched the ball on the first Hail Mary, questioning whether he did the right thing and Joey Pope, who was guarding JJ Buchanon as he caught the second Hail Mary, feeling like he let everyone down. They needed Taylor to pick them up.

As difficult as it was, according to Pullins, perhaps without knowing it, Taylor was exhibiting key attributes of sports psychology: the play-the-next-play mentality and not dwelling on the past. He cites a term in tennis called the golden mean, which is a mental approach to balancing emotional extremes. Football fans may be familiar with the approach thanks to "the process" popularized by Nick Saban, whom Taylor worked for as a graduate assistant from 2007-2009. 

Taylor reaches behind him and grabs a massive three-ring binder. It's his playbook from when he was a graduate assistant in Tuscaloosa. It's opened to a page diagramming jump ball defense. 

He and Saban have talked recently about a better way to defend a Hail Mary the next time the Broncos are in that situation. Up front, the biggest problem on the play was one of Western Michigan's rushers didn't adjust when Michigan motioned a tight end across the formation. They've also changed their approach with nine seconds left, when there could be time for another play, versus one with one second left.  With less time on the clock, they need more people back to defend the pass that has to go in the end zone. Taylor also bemoans a fumbled snap on a third-and-2 when Western Michigan had the ball late. Instead of converting a first down and kneeling the game out, Western kicked a field goal to go ahead by the margin on Bowler's banner. 

Taylor's boss is focused on the lessons to be learned

Western Michigan president Russ Kavalhuna isn't an athletic director by trade, but with an interim in charge of the department after former AD Dan Bartholomae left for Michigan State two weeks before the football season started, he has taken to playing one on TV. 

He is Western to his core. He was born in Kalamazoo and graduated from the school in 2001. He came to see the spectacle of College GameDay on that snowy November day 11 years ago, pushing his kids in a stroller. The first thing you see when you walk in his office is the wall of Western Michigan degrees belonging to over 20 family members going back to 1966 including his wife, Courtney, and an uncle who earned a Ph.D and was on faculty at the school. He was on the field the night of the game, and in the chaos before the review started, Taylor spotted him celebrating as he went to take his headset off. After it was over, Taylor apologized for letting him down.  

In the past, Kavalhuna was a federal prosecutor, and has lived part of his professional career dealing in the black and white world of the legal system and the justice department. So, is what happened to his school unjust?  

"A lot of times when bad things happen, people grasp onto this like we need to repair and we need to find a winner and a loser and a victim and an oppressor," Kavalhuna said. "And I'm not saying that doesn't exist here, but what that does is it takes away what is way more exciting for me, which is think about if you're Micah Davis who actually touched the ball there. 

What he's going to be able to say is how he learned about leadership, how painful that was, what did he take as a step forward in how he encounters the next really painful thing, which probably was breaking his thumb against Rice. I can tell you, I was on the sideline there. He came out in sweats after breaking his thumb and cheered his team on, that is far more important and far more interesting, and actually sustains the purpose of all this far more than what was justice."  

Sports are one of the few things in life that is supposed to give us clear winners and losers. The final score should be binary. But here, it wasn't, and Kavalhuna admits that can be unsettling. He refers to what he's doing as grabbing the gray, which is inhabiting and evaluating the gray area that exists in how the Michigan game ended. 

He and Taylor are both fighting a battle with their Gen Z players

Taylor admits that this is the first time he's been involved with a moment that went truly viral, and that has created a problem specific to this era. How do you move on when people around you won't? 

The notion that Western won isn't said jokingly around town, nor is it a throwaway quip. It is a firmly held belief that friend and even foe alike espouse. 

"I was having breakfast at a place out on Stadium Drive this morning," Pullins said. "This guy had a Michigan shirt, and he just kind of said hi to me so I said 'What do you think about the game?' He responded: 'Western won.' Simple as that. 

"I think even if you're a Michigan fan, you realize that there's something funny about that. That's not a good way to get a win. That shows, in my opinion, no character. You know, if I were Michigan, I would acknowledge that. That shows class. I think the way [Taylor and Western Michigan] has handled it has been superb, and I think in part that's the way they've gotten so much acknowledgement. If they had been like, you know, mad, you know, all that kind of stuff. I don't think it would have been acknowledged what it has across all media for days"

What many don't understand about Taylor's initial response after the game, when he was lauded for his gregariousness in his postgame press conference, is neither he nor anyone else on his team had any idea what millions had seen on television regarding how clear it was -- according to the broadcast graphic -- that the clock hit triple zeroes. 

As far as he was concerned, the officials just put a second back on the clock, a frustrating but not unheard of thing (it happened two weeks later during a memorable ending to a Vanderbilt-NC State game as well). It wasn't until he was on the bus back home that he started to understand the controversy and see what his players were seeing. It really wasn't until he came into work Sunday morning and was told by his chief of staff he had 150 emails and more texts than he could count that he realized this wasn't going away. 

Taylor, Kavalhuna and other school officials huddled the day after the game and by Sunday afternoon decided to hold a press conference coordinated by an external PR firm brought on in the immediate aftermath as it also became apparent to the group they had something serious on their hands, and that, at least behind the scenes, they had the right to ask questions. 

That day, Taylor said he refused to make an excuse out of what happened because that allows his team to be "bitter instead of getting better." It was a public message to his team more than anyone else, who he didn't get to address as a group until Sunday evening, when they returned to the facility. In that meeting, he showed them the replay video the Big Ten shared with them and explained the back and forth school leadership had with the MAC and the Big Ten. He felt like they needed to see he was fighting for them even if he doubted anything would change. 

"You look at what the Big Ten officials were looking at under the hood, and whether they were right or they were wrong, they made this decision based on they thought that there was time on the clock," Taylor said. "So you can listen to your mom, or you can listen to your friends, and you can be pissed off, and you start to feel sorry for yourself, or you can say, "It is what it is. We need to move on. Like just like we said last night, we're not going to get bitter about this. We need to find a way to get better. They kind of looked at me kind of crazy in the beginning, like you know it looks like we still got screwed. But I thought that they needed to at least hear that and see that."

There is the dual nature of what the program leaders are telling them and then the lived reality of opening your phone. Sims admits to still getting texts and calls from people he hasn't heard of in forever telling him that he won. Boise State head coach Spencer Danielson referred to WMU as undefeated in a press conference leading up to their game in Week 4. 

"You know, we're all young adults here, and you know it's difficult. Even before the Rice game, one of their staff members came up to me and said 'You guys won that game,'" quarterback Broc Lowry said. "The whole world's trying to make us remember what happened. But you know, it's just up to us to be mature enough to get past it and focus on what's next."

Part of the local dynamic includes the deeply held belief that Michigan cheats. That's thanks to Michigan's own recently sketchy history of, among other things, the sign stealing scandal perpetuated by Connor Stallions that included his attendance at a Central Michigan-Michigan State game. Mix in the heavy skepticism inherent toward the Wolverines locally with the broad distrust of institutions that permeates American society, and you have the ingredients for the combustible response to, for instance, the Big Ten's delayed transparency in releasing the discussion between replay officials and referees to the public. 

Kavalhuna has seen the memes, and he's seen the videos where people try to triangulate when Davis touched the ball versus the stadium clock and the theory there was a hidden clock or that Michigan had to be undefeated going into Oklahoma for marketing purposes or that this was in some way related to gambling which he says "doesn't even work on the facts." 

"That wasn't just seeping in. It was pelting my mobile phone," Kavalhuna said. 

"It's one thing to say, "Hey, can we look at this and try to evaluate what went right, what went wrong? That's one thing, and having learned in a flight deck, in a courtroom, in a boardroom, that that should be your best practice. 

"But it's a far other thing, and we try to teach students this. When you go from there and assign malintent and actual improprieties, like have some facts to back that up. I have charged people with federal felonies before so, and you know in today's world, I think some people don't follow that." 

"You and I both know when we interact with decision makers in those institutions, we've seen different types of people. Ones who are like, okay, something bad happened. Let's evaluate it. Let's see what is demonstrable information that I can rely upon to make a decision. Versus, I'm really upset. Someone screwed something up, and it looks like you probably had bad intent or maybe a motive. Shame on you! You're the devil, and I'm not as guilty as you are. That doesn't work. I mean, I will say it works on a couple social media platforms, but if you're trying to help students learn how to be adults and good teammates and good partners, you need to say 'loud isn't always right.'"

He admits it was frustrating to see the slings and arrows thrown at him and Taylor. He says people don't have a clue what they're talking about, and it's doubtful they care that that's the case. In the immediate aftermath, some in the university community wanted hellfire and brimstone. In the midst of LSU going back and forth in court with the SEC (of which it is a charter member) Western Michigan took the high road whether some people like it or not. 

"Look, I'm a fan," Kavalhuna said. "I wasn't happy with that, but I'd like to find a way for society to trend away from I need to be mad, and so I'm going to be mad at a football game. Like I don't think that's healthy. I would invite that person to go take a walk or jog with me or talk about some things that we enjoy, like family or food or something. But my students are exposed over and over to people posing as leaders who exhibit the exact opposite. Be mad, be loud, and if someone asks you to rethink, then be even more mad, yeah. Like never look in the mirror and say, "Hey, what is my responsibility in this situation?"

There is no clearer example of the world as Kavalhuna wants it to be versus the world as it is than in an interaction with one of the multiple students who walk up to him to say hello while he's being interviewed. When asked her opinion on who won the game, she says Western because obviously "Michigan paid the refs." 

Kavalhuna puts his hand on his forehead and conceals a sigh. 

The Boise State game allows a chance to turn the page

Yes, Western Michigan took the high road in the wake of the Michigan loss, but Taylor is a competitor. The focus now is on Boise State, the standard by which other Group of Six programs are measured and a team that plays with a similar physical style to Western Michigan. Taylor is in Year 4 and says this is what he and his players have waited for. They wanted to repeat as MAC champions and give themselves a chance to play in the College Football Playoff. An important step to the second goal happens against Boise State. And the hope is that if they can win and go on a run in MAC play, their CFP case will be judged with the proper context. 

"There's never been, as far as I can tell, a game like this in college football history, so look at it like that," Kavaalhuna said of the Michigan game.  

But there is actually some precedent for an end-of-game process failure to be considered by the selection committee and that game featured a directional Michigan, too. In 2016, Central Michigan got an erroneous untimed down and sprung an upset on Oklahoma State. The result was not officially overturned, and there were questions about how the result would be taken into account if the Cowboys (who finished 10-3 that year) were in CFP contention. Then CFP executive director Bill Hancock told ESPN: 

"That ability to comprehensively consider each game is one of the most significant benefits of the CFP protocol." 

In a twist of fate, former Michigan State head coach Mark Dantonio will be on this year's CFP selection committee and may have to consider the Broncos in November. The blue Broncos, who made the CFP two years ago and even received a bye, visiting the brown Broncos, gives the latter a chance to turn the page and build a narrative around the program that's more tied to the present than the past. 

"I think no matter what happens, I think this is a storyline that will follow us," Taylor said. "And honestly, it's probably a good thing, right? I mean, as long as people are talking about it, even though I don't want to talk about it, as long as people are talking about it, it probably means that we're winning and that we're relevant and we're at least in the conversation."